Soros-founded university says it has been kicked out of Hungary as an autocrat tightens his grip

BERLIN — An American university established a quarter-century ago to educate a new generation of leaders and scholars after communism’s collapse in Central and Eastern Europe said Monday it had been kicked out of its home in Hungary.

The ejection marked one of the surest signals to date of autocracy’s return to the country, and the region, after decades of relative freedom. It is the first time a university has been forced out of an E.U. nation.

Central European University has long been considered among the world’s finest graduate schools, attracting students from across the globe, and it is widely seen as the best in Hungary.

But the university, which was founded by Hungarian American financier George Soros, had also been the target for nearly two years of a right-wing government that has systematically consolidated control and marginalized dissent. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been particularly ruthless in attacking anything associated with Soros, whose open and liberal philosophy is the antithesis of the illiberal, nationalist and nativist view celebrated by Orban.